"Let Me Be Your Yoko Ono"

I have an album called Live Peace In Toronto, 1969. The album was released in December of 1969, and it's by The Plastic Ono Band. Now if you look that album up on, say, Amazon, the artist listed is "John Lennon," which is no surprise, but when the album was released, the label said "Plastic Ono Band."

I call it the "divorce album." I call it that because my wife told me that if I ever play it again in her hearing she will divorce me.

When Lennon went on stage that day in September, he hadn't played live since Candlestick Park in San Francisco, which was where the Beatles played their last concert in 1966, not counting the rooftop concert they did in London in January '69. And here he was, having rehearsed on the plane with Yoko, and with Eric Clapton, and Klaus Voorman, and Alan White, who would go on to play drums with Yes, replacing the irreplaceable Bill Bruford. So it was a bit of a surprise when they showed up, because he (Lennon) had been invited to play, but nobody really expected him I don't think.

But he showed up. I don't know if this album was the whole concert, it may have been. They played oldies "("Blue Suede Shoes," "Dizzy Miss Lizzy"), "Give Peace A Chance" which had recently been recorded at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal and was riding up the pop charts at that very moment, "Cold Turkey" which would be the next single, and on which Yoko's voice could be heard, bleating like a sheep - a sick sheep.

Side 2 of the album, the latter part of the performance presumably, was given over to Yoko. She does her "signature song," which is called "Don't Worry Kyoko (Mommy's Only Looking For Her Hand In The Snow"), the lyrics of which consist chiefly of the words "don't worry" played over a super grungy guitar riff. It actually kind of rocks, although it's still Yoko and all, and then comes "John, John Let's Hope For Peace," during which the band members stack their various instruments next to the amps, creating a howling raging feedback, while Yoko screams her head off. This goes on for quite a while. At the end she stops singing, um, screaming, but it takes a while before anyone actually turns off the amps, or removes the instruments, and so the album finishes with this droning screech that goes on for 2 or 3 minutes.

I can't imagine what the audience was thinking. They were probably expecting "Norwegian Wood." Richard Ginell at allmusic says this "was Lennon's declaration of independence from the Beatles," and so it may have been, but he dismisses side two as being "just as irritating today as it was in 1969." So he doesn't get it. It was putting Yoko on the stage and letting her loose that was his independence, that was the point, kind of like the anti-Beatles.

Ok, so I like side 2 of the album. It's noisy, no not just noisy, but ear-splitting, deafening, piercing noisy. Most of it isn't what any typical person would call "music." It is challenging; it is surprising, and it is insolent, more so than the three experimental albums he'd done with Yoko till then. It is Lennon standing up to the world and saying I'm not what you think I am, I don't have to wear any kind of clothes or hat, I don't have to give you what you want, I don't have to be whom the world thinks of as John Lennon.

I kinda get that…